Why are the American People punishing Obama?

@cicerone imposter,

Because many folks are still living in poverty and have gained nothing since his coming to office. Politics is a huge money GAME. You got to understand that first and foremost. But I live in Canada I can't say much else. Although I commend the fact he has done much for the people, he also needs to put boots on the ground to stop ISIS in its tracks. Simply my opinion. You can't win a war by air. Not when they have 12 year olds sporting Light Machine Guns. Look it up. Kid looks real tough.

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@MattWSpanjer,

Kinda sad when these kids are used as soldiers to kill and be killed.
FYI, the US is not the world's police. ISIS should be an international community concern.

To suggest that the US need to put boots on the ground to fight ISIS isn't practical. The war against ISIS is closer to Europe and Russia. When they hesitate to send their soldiers in harms way, why should the US?

Americans are tired of wars; most have been illegal and non-productive.

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Quote:

According to the nonprofit American Committment, Gruber reportedly made his videotaped comments at a special event on the MIT campus and conceded that it was necessary to avoid transparency to pass Obama's healthcare grab. Dr, Gruber even admitted to lying in order to help the Obama White House and the Democrats in both houses of the U.S. Congress in order to get the support of a number of groups and individuals.

"During the intense debate over ACU, the Republicans were denigrated and vilified for being opposed to the legislation that very few, if any, lawmaker read. In fact, one congressman, Alan Grayson of Florida, told the American people that Republicans 'want you to die' because they opposed Obama's monstrosity," said former hospital security director and police chief, Tony Arcadian. "I believe these people should face criminal charges for perpetrating a fraud. Eric Holder prosecuted businessmen for less," Arcadian added.

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” says the MIT economist who helped write Obamacare. “And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.

http://www.examiner.com/article/breaking-obamacare-architect-admits-obama-lied-about-his-signature-law

"we lied to you because we had to to get what we wanted" will not work for Obama or anyone else. It is the second biggest problem with Obamacare, the first being the lack of even minimal R buy in. The thing that Obama did not understand is that poorly birthed major government programs do not survive, that his theory that if he got the damn thing started by hook or crook that it would keep it going under its own momentum is wrong. He also seems to not understand that his choice to birth this thing by lying pretty much destroys any chance that the historians will be kind to him.

And now The Professor and the D's dont understand why with as much as we had the R's we hate the D's more? Drunk

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Notwithstanding the drop in unemployment rates, the Labor Force Participation rate has been dropping steadily since Obama took office. This measure had been stable at 66% for several decades until Obama took office and it has fallen to just over 62% in a steady decline since he took office. That and the lower unemployment measure point to the growing dropout rate from the workforce. Higher disability claims and foodstamp data confirm all this. Income data confirms that a growing fraction of workers are in lower paying jobs, a large fraction likely under reduced hours or part time employment. I suspect all this a significant indicator of the public dissatisfaction so evident in the recent election.

The ACA was touted to be a big winner for the Democrats - as the esteemed Nancy Pelosi told us that, once we passed the law and found out what's in it, we would all love it. It hasn't quite turned out that way. The inept rollout of the ACA exchanges; the meaningless "red lines" in Syria; the gathering chaos in the Mideast; the many fumbles attendant to the ebola scare; the continuing lukewarm recovery from the recession (the slowest in several ngenerations); and the growing appearance of detachment on the part of the president have all added to the public unease.

Democrat apologists appear to be suggesting that the recent election was an anomoly and that the people voted against their known best interests. My experience in life suggests this isn't likely to be true. People aren't that stupid, particulary with respect to their self interest. However, I am glad to see all the denial and rationalizations on the part of Democrats and their apologists here. It will speed their political defeat.

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@georgeob1,

Quote:

The inept rollout of the ACA exchanges; the meaningless "red lines" in Syria; the gathering chaos in the Mideast; the many fumbles attendant to the ebola scare; the continuing lukewarm recovery from the recession (the slowest in several ngenerations); and the growing appearance of detachment on the part of the president have all added to the public unease.

That the goddamned Russians are causing problems again and we not only dont have an answer for it but our political leaders for two decades have been telling us that the Russians are now our friends is another one that I would add. If we cant handle the russians after all of this time and the collapse of the USSR then how in Hell are we ever going to handle the Chinese?

Word is that the ObamaCare website might not be ready for round two, if that is the case then Obama and the D's are going to get reamed again. The incompetence of government under Obama's leadership has become a national embarrassment, and it is going to keep costing the D's for a long time.

However, the global economic meltdown that happened under the leadership of our politicians, getting lied to about Iraq and ObamaCare, the massive miscalculation on russia and actually most areas of global affairs makes the american people uneasy about the competence of both parties. We dont trust anyone, and we dont have a reason to either based upon recent performance.

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@georgeob1,

FMPOV, republicans need to step lightly, because the expectations of the electorate is very high on producing what they said was their number one issue; job creation.

As you have argued - like forever - the government doesn't create jobs. Jobs are created when there is demand for the products and services produced. However, the government does pay the wages and benefits for all government workers that includes our military and government departments.

Also, higher minimum wage does not destroy jobs (as conservatives would parrot); there's no evidence of it. Even UC Berkeley's study shows it had little to no impact when San Francisco increased their minimum wage to the highest in the country with no descernible loss of jobs.

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Quote:

But the bigger problem, he argues, is that the Democrats' policy agenda, aside from proposing minimum wage increases, isn't particularly built to help the 99 percent.

Quote:

But what are the policies that would change this corrosive trend? And how do you run on them as a party if you don't know what they are? Minimum wage increases help those at the very bottom of the income scale and they have a lifting effect up the wage scale as the floor gets pushed up. But it is at best a small part of the puzzle. Clamping down on tax dodges by the extremely wealthy claws back some resources for the treasury and sends an important message, as might some restrictions on ridiculously high CEO pay. But again, these are important changes at the margins that do not fundamentally change the equation. Economic populism or another comparable politics with a different tonality won't get you very far if you can get beyond beating up on the winners to providing concrete improvements to those losing out in today's economy.

Marshall's argument—that the Democrats haven't proposed a structural solution to inequality—dovetails with Thompson's Atlantic piece, which explains how an economy can grow without the participants in that economy getting paid more. Basically: The industries on the rise in America are the ones that create crap service jobs, while the country's more sustainable manufacturing-type companies are focused on growth and hiring abroad rather than here.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/11/10/income_inequality_still_a_political_loser_josh_marshall_suggests_so.html

Well now, that kinda sounds like it might be a problem when the D's go asking for votes. And it comes right on the heels of Obama and mostly the D's saving the fat cat bankers who got reckless with tons of handouts, prosecuting none of them for their illegal activity. And saving GM and Chrysler, two companies which had certainly earned the deathbed. Obama and the D's just make up new rules as they go. The R's at least objected, and a lot of them voted against these giveaways to the 1%, and voiced opposition to the allegedly independent but not really Federal reserve pumping over $3.5 trillion to mostly fat cats at home and overseas by way of QE 1. 2 and 3.

What about us, the 99%? And who says that the D's look after our well being better than the R's do because the R's at least act uneasy spending all of this money that our kids and grandkids are going to have to pay back.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

hawk, You gotta quit listening to FAUX SNOOZE.

What percent does minimum wage increases help?

From the US Department of Labor.

Quote:

Minimum Wage Mythbusters
Myth: Raising the minimum wage will only benefit teens.
Not true: The typical minimum wage worker is not a high-school student earning weekend pocket money. In fact, 88 percent of those who would benefit from a federal minimum wage increase are age 20 or older, and 55 percent are women.

Myth: Increasing the minimum wage will cause people to lose their jobs.
Not true: A review of 64 studies on minimum wage increases found no discernable effect on employment. Additionally, more than 600 economists, seven of them Nobel Prize winners in economics, have signed onto a letter in support of raising the minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016.

Myth: Small business owners can't afford to pay their workers more, and therefore don't support an increase in the minimum wage.
Not true: A June 2014 survey found that more than 3 out of 5 small business owners support increasing the minimum wage to $10.10. Small business owners believe that a higher minimum wage would benefit business in important ways: 58% say raising the minimum wage would increase consumer purchasing power. 56% say raising the minimum wage would help the economy. In addition, 53% agree that with a higher minimum wage, businesses would benefit from lower employee turnover, increased productivity and customer satisfaction.

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@cicerone imposter,

How exactly does an increase in minimum wage actually help the middle class, as touted by Obama and Lizzy Warren? Both these touts keep saying they want to protect the middle class and an increase in minimum wage will do that ... how????

The American People are punishing Obama and Democrats because of nonsense like this minimum wage argument. First, the Feds should not establish minimum wage as that should be at the State level. The cost of living in the Northeast for example should have no impact on wages in Alabama. Second, your statistics do not include the percentage of all workers who are working for minimum wage. That amount is a small fraction of the overall workforce and many times includes second jobs, not primary jobs.

The vast majority of American used to be in the middle class which is shrinking because of the policies of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Remember, it was the Congress controlled by Democrats who gave the richest of the rich the biggest tax break in history when they increased the Estate Tax exemption to 5M per person (10M perfamily) and reduced the tax by 30% to 40%.

Obama, Warren et al.. are ly8ing when they say they want to protect the middle class. That is why they are being punished.

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@georgeob1,

There are over 6 million more people over 65 since Obama took office. Employment participation is dropping because the baby boomers are retiring and will continue to drop until 2050 at which point over 30% of the US population will be 65 and older.

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0007.pdf
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

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@woiyo,

Quote:

How exactly does an increase in minimum wage actually help the middle class, as touted by Obama and Lizzy Warren

So do you think people spend more if they have more money?

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@woiyo,

Quote:

Remember, it was the Congress controlled by Democrats who gave the richest of the rich the biggest tax break in history when they increased the Estate Tax exemption to 5M per person (10M perfamily) and reduced the tax by 30% to 40%.

It's amazing how you think you can rewrite history woiyo.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/ninetyestate.pdf

Quote:

In 1997, the 105th Congress passed the Taxpayer
Relief Act of 1997 (111 Stat. 788). Among the most
significant changes to estate and gift tax laws includ
-
ed in this act was the incremental increase of the uni
-
fied credit to $345,800 by 2006, effectively raising
the estate tax filing threshold to $1 million.

GOP controlled House and Senate.

Quote:

The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconcili
-
ation Act (EGTRRA) of 2001 (115 Stat. 38) provided
for sweeping changes to the transfer tax system, the
most significant of which was the eventual repeal of the tax. Specifically, the law provided for periodic increases in the exemption amount for decedents who
die after December 31, 2001, so that the effective
filing threshold will be $3.5 million by 2009. The
tax is then repealed for decedents who die in 2010.

The GOP controlled the House and the Senate was a 50/50 split.

http://www.mcguirewoods.com/news-resources/publications/estate-tax-changes.pdf

Quote:

THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER RELIEF ACT OF 2012
...
The compromise in the federal estate tax was
to make 2011 and 2012 law generally permanent, but with a compromise rate of 40 percent (the midpoint between the 2012 rate of 35 percent and the 2009 rate of 45 percent)

The GOP controlled the House. The Dems controlled the Senate.

1 Reply

@parados,

By your own cited census data the % of the population over 65 increased from 18% to 19% between 2000 and 2010. Meanwhile, as life expectancy rises, many people are retiring later. Additionally, the ageing of our population is a continuous process, while the labor force participation rate was flat for at least a decade before the recession and Obama taking office, when the steady decline in the labor participation rate began. I don't have an explanation for the prior flat rate: perhaps the Brueau of labor statistics does.

You have a point here, however it explains, at best, about a quarter of the measured drop in labor force participation rates.

The truth is Social Security disability rolls and Food Stamp participation have expanded enprmously; work force participation is down well below expected levels; and a growing fraction of workers are part time or at 30 hours/week and making less annually than before. All of this is tracable to the sluggish recovery we have seen from the 2007/8 recession (the slowest in two generations). That is largely tracable to the foolish and largely non productive regulatory environment created by Democrat-initiated financial, Labor, Environmental and Health Care legislation, and the President's excessive use of executive power. Together they have created an uncertain and unpredictable business environment. Companies are sitting on cash and credit, unwilling to invest it in an uncertain regulatory climate, and the economy is stagmating as a result. Sadly for us, the Obama prescription is simply more of the poision that caused the problem.

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@georgeob1,

Quote:

By your own cited census data the % of the population over 65 increased from 18% to 19% between 2000 and 2010.

1. It is now 2014 which my other source is for 2013 and allows you to get totals of over 6 million more 65 and older in population.
2. The number over 55 has also increased and many people retire early at 55 so any argument about people retiring later is not possible to be made without factual numbers.
3. The total population over 85 has also increased during this time period. Are you now going to argue that over 85 are retiring later too?

Quote:

You have a point here, however it explains, at best, about a quarter of the measured drop in labor force participation rates.

Actually it would explain over half of the drop if we merely assume that the over 65 crowd isn't working. (Some over 65 aren't retired but some under 65 are. You can get SS at 62 or retire without it at any time.)

1 Reply

@parados,

You are evading the point again. You raised a meaningful issue and the census data indicated that in the decade between 2000 and 2010 the population % over 65 rose by 1%. Using that as a baseline we can expect at most a 0.8% rise in the over 65 fraction of the population since Obama took office. That explains about a quarter of the measured drop in the Labor Force Participation rate (Bureau of Labor Statistics) since Obama took office, and leaves the fact that it was flat for a decade before that unexplained.

You do have a real point here, and I have acknowledged it. However, it still leaves most if the drop unexplained, and you don't help your case by trying to stretch it beyond its limits.

BTW, I'm past 70 and run a fairly large business. I'm seeing more and more professionals, (engineers, geologists, scientists) work well past 65. There's high demand for skilled people in these areas and those with the energy and inclination do well.

1 Reply

@woiyo,

It doesn't 'protect' anyone. An increase in the minimum wage puts more money into their pockets that they can spend. That in turn helps other businesses increase their income that they can turn around and spend. It's somewhat of a pyramid scheme where money gets turned over many times after it comes into the economy. Money is not static; it's dynamic.

Do you have any sense of logic? More money in circulation helps the whole economy when inflation is low. Since 20% of the wealthy owns 80% of the assets, there's no fear of inflation - yet.

When millions earn millions more, they spend it in the marketplace. That helps create more demand for goods and services, and those same businesses will spend more to produce more to meet demand. That's what's called 'capitalism.' They hire more people to meet demand.

That's the reason why retail shops hire more workers during the Christmas Holiday Season, because demand increases the most during the year. If they don't have the workers to meet the demand, those shoppers will go elsewhere to spend their money.

Econ 101.

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

It doesn't 'protect' anyone. An increase in the minimum wage puts more money into their pockets that they can spend. That in turn helps other businesses increase their income that they can turn around and spend. It's somewhat of a pyramid scheme where money gets turned over many times after it comes into the economy. Money is not static; it's dynamic.

Do you have any sense of logic? More money in circulation helps the whole economy when inflation is low. Since 20% of the wealthy owns 80% of the assets, there's no fear of inflation - yet.

It's not ECON 101. These ideas (in a more elegant form) were put forward by the British economist J.M. Keynes in the 1030s. They have long since been discredited. The price increase Burger King will apply to pay for the raises will take much of the added money from the raises out of circulation. Investment in new production capability does however have such a multiplier. Unfortunately in the current regulatory climate thre's damn little of that except in the energy industry which Obama is doing his best to shut down.

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@parados,

Quote:

@georgeob1,
There are over 6 million more people over 65 since Obama took office. Employment participation is dropping because the baby boomers are retiring and will continue to drop until 2050 at which point over 30% of the US population will be 65 and older.

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0007.pdf
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

Well that would explain it except for the fact that it directly conflicts with BLS data.

Labor Participation Rates for various age groups 2002-2012:

Age 16 - 24 decreased by 1.4% per year
Age 25 -54 decreased by .2% per year.
Age 55 - 64 increased by .4 per year.
Age 65 - 74 increased by 2.8% per yer.
Age 75 and up increased by 4.1% per year.

So people over the age of 55 are not leaving the workforce. And the BLS projections for 2012-2022 show this trend getting worse, not better.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/labor-force-projections-to-2022-the-labor-force-participation-rate-continues-to-fall.htm ( Table 3)

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@georgeob1,

The extended push on min wage is leading to a revolution in lower end food service, replacing humans with machines and technology. But the main result of too high min wage will be a masive shrinkage of retail, as the economics will no longer make sense. It will propel the shift to online ordering from massive distrubution centers, which will not only cut jobs but lead to a crisis in real estate prices as well as mood. Ton of extra empty retail space will be depressing.

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@Woodworker766,

Those numbers make sense; there's been a trend for at least the past two decades where older people stay on their jobs. Some stay because they love work, and others out of necessity. Also, we've known for quite some time that this is the period when the baby-boomers would begin to retire, and also remaining on their jobs.

Also, the population of the US is increasing.

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Why are the American People punishing Obama?

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